


That Old Zen Paradox

by halotolerant



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-07
Updated: 2007-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:39:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: If two policeman shag and no one hears them, does that mean it didn't happen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Old Zen Paradox

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Тот старый парадокс Дзен](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6177724) by [NancyMuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyMuck/pseuds/NancyMuck)



Music had never exactly played a large role in Gene Hunt’s sex life. Not, that is, beyond the loud stuff in a club that would prevent the bird of the moment hearing him change her drinks order to a double. He had always felt that he was above using heavy songs for seduction – not for him long steamy ballads from a record player or – heaven help us – going to one of those poncey restaurants where flipping violin players lurked over your shoulder.

 

For these reasons, sex for Gene had always sounded like, well, like sex. Like fucking – movement, moaning, wet noises and the slap of skin against skin. The noises you got through a wall, the noises they shoved onto porno flicks to help you get your jollies. Gloriously impersonal and wonderfully gratifying.

 

Not any more though.

 

Now the soundtrack of sex – the thuds and cries, whimpers and yells that had always been a victory parade – had to be removed and replaced.

 

Now that he was having sex with Sam Tyler.

 

And bloody hell, just letting that sentence be true, letting it echo in his head, it was like getting punched. He had to sit down, had to breathe and forget it a bit before he could move again.

 

“I have fucking indigestion from the fucking Paki cat-meat curry place my fucking genius DI suggested, alright?” had been his snarled retort to Chris, who’d dared to ask about his Guv’s distracted air.

 

But no matter how unreal it seemed, having sex with Sam Tyler Gene bloody well was. And the sight of him going round to Sam’s flat in the evenings – too many evenings, they weren’t cautious enough – this sight could not be followed by an even slightly incriminating sound.

 

Which – let’s face it – a year ago Gene would have killed himself laughing at the suggestion of that particular issue posing a problem, right after he’d killed the person suggesting it, of course.

 

But now – now, oh god – now he can just be in a room with Sam and find himself wanting to make every damn dangerous noise he’s ever swallowed down, fucking aching with it. And Sam _catches_ it, notices every damn time. If he mocked Gene or tried to use it to get one over him, that Gene could have dealt with. But actually Sam blinks, looks away, and swallows – this tiny, forced, dry swallow that makes a little ‘click’ in his throat.

 

Thus, when they are (finally, eventually, incautiously often) alone, keeping quiet can be a bit of an issue.

 

\- - -

 

Silence. They only managed silence once. The first time.

 

They’d been too busy watching each other to kiss. No eyes closing – there could be no letting up from waiting for someone to give something away. No proper kissing at all, though that – Gene now knows – is usually a good way to help keep down the noise, but they weren’t talking, scarcely moaning, biting it back.

 

The abandoned squat had still had its carpet and exotic Indian wall hangings, red and orange fabrics soaking up sound like blood. It was a place where there had never been a high likelihood of finding leads in the Fred Thomas murder inquiry, a place that it would have been far more reasonable to have Chris or Ray search. But Gene and Sam had gone there together, and that was how it started, really. Not when Sam – standing in a chilly breeze from the smashed windows – had unbuttoned his shirt a little further saying “Bloody hot in here, eh?” Not when Gene had grabbed him by that shirt and shoved him against a wall just because he could. Not when he’d gone for Sam’s neck with his lips, nuzzling frantically, and it had felt like part of all the same thing, like it was always where he’d been heading, every damn time.

 

Sam’s neck was warm and smelt like the cigarette haze at the station. Gene licked a stripe around the curve of his jaw with a desperate slowness, overwhelmed by his own need to taste. He had got hard from it even before Sam had let out a shuddering breath and made one sound, one choked-off, pornographic sound, and raised his hands to Gene’s belt.

 

That had been the first time. It had sounded like a distant road, a rattling blind and heartbeats, very loud and fast.

 

\- - -

 

It wasn’t silent, after that. Words crept in, like ‘Can I?’ and ‘Fuck’ and ‘ _There_ ’. But they kept quiet. They had to. They – you had to hand it to them – they had a rare eye for places that it really, truly wasn’t a good idea to have sex in. Places where detection could swoop in at any moment with far greater efficiency than was managed with, oh, say _crime_. Gene couldn’t believe his own stupidity – _Sam’s_ stupidity.

 

Like the second time, a week after the first, when they’d left the pub late after trying to drink away the tension and Sam had, uncharacteristically, pushed Gene against a wall, getting a hand inside his pants with only a whispered “Let me” that sank into Gene’s skin like lotion. The relief – of tension, of arousal, of the fucking ache in his pants – but also of the vague fear that it would never happen again - which it now seemed had been greater than his fear that it would - had overridden all his judgement.

 

Sam’s lips had been soft as he pressed them to Gene’s, Sam’s tongue sliding into his mouth and apparently carrying a message straight to Gene’s cock. Sex had sounded like Sam’s breathing, his breathing hitching right along with Gene’s.

 

\- - -

 

There were a few more times in the stupid places – toilets, alley-ways, the sodding Cortina - quiet as kids playing hide and seek, only feeling so loud that they must be blazing out messages into space.

 

It wasn’t like they’d talked about it, like they’d ever talked about it, like they’d ever used more than the words they needed to manoeuvre in space. Talking was what they did in the real world, in the day-to-day truth where weird kinky fairy-tales didn’t come true. Gene had always found it easy and simple to talk to Sam, before. But the boundaries had to be maintained, and the talking, the day-job, that couldn’t be part of sex.

 

Well, it stood to reason, didn’t it? Worse risk of getting caught if you made a noise.

 

So the sex had only _felt_ loud, loud as all hell, Gene’s hands in Sam’s hair as Sam kissed the hollow of his throat and ran hands over his back.

 

Gene – head thrown back, eyes closed to try and cope with so many conflicting sensations at once - only feeling, only imagining his father’s voice yelling at him, telling him what he was, what this was.

 

\- - -

 

 _When Gene was almost a teenager, before his brother took up drugs and disappeared and before his Dad burnt out, he would lie awake at night watching the shadows and hearing Stuart’s radio through the flimsy partition – Dick Barton, Special Detective, it often was – sleeplessly dreaming of the future._

 _Stuart wouldn’t let Dad take Gene to the pub. Stuart himself had been dragged along from the age of seven, but as soon as he got old enough to disagree he’d done so on behalf of himself and his younger brother. Stuart was the one who brought or rather dragged Gene up, the one who cooked dinner, or took them down the chippy. Stuart was the one who got knocked around worst, trying to protect his brother._

 _Later, years later, Dad would get thin and yellow and crabbed, the beefy arms and strong, hard hands withering away. Later, Dad would cower from his children instead of the other way round. Later, Dad would even tell Gene he was sorry, ask to see the scars on Gene’s back and weep -though Gene would know it was the alcohol talking and ignore it._

 _But that would be later, and there were many years preceding it._

 _“Fucking queers!” was Dad’s yell, whenever he got in from the pub, incensed that they hadn’t joined him. “I’ve got a pair of queer fucking poufs as my sons!” And he’d yell for his dinner, complain about the “fucking queer radio music, fucking nigger music” and end up being sick, usually in the kitchen somewhere and Gene had to clean it up, because Stuart wouldn’t on principle and it was that or live with it._

 _Whenever Dad saw him doing it he’d try and hit Gene, though he was usually too paralytic to make much impact, screaming about his queer, bum-boy, limp-wrist son who did house-work like a Nancy._

 _In the morning, Dad would have a hangover and no noise was allowed at all._

 

\- - -

 

“Fucking queer” Gene had said, into Sam’s ear, close and breathy.

 

That was three weeks in, and they had been on a bed. And there had been sound, for the first time, because four walls enclosed them and they didn’t fear each other quite as much. And the sex had sounded like Gene’s entire vocabulary of hateful words, as he told them to Sam in a long tumbling string of rising volume, working up to the moment his mind went blank.

 

It had begun with Gene trying to touch Sam everywhere at once, revelling in the space, spread-eagling his DI diagonally across his own once-marital bed, which Kate hadn’t wanted in the divorce settlement because (she claimed) “It has too many bad memories.”

 

Then Sam had moved to push him away and had sat up, cock bobbing near his stomach. He’d reached out for Gene’s face, pulled him close and kissed him, slow and deep and possessive, tongue stroking out bolts of lightning that went all the way to the soles of Gene’s feet.

 

And then, smiling, holding Gene’s gaze as long as he could, he’d slowly and deliberately turned over to lie on his stomach across the bed and spread his legs, just slightly.

 

Gene’s stomach had flopped like he’d eaten canteen chill con carne, and he’d moved forward to straddle over Sam, feeling throbs of arousal like someone had injected red hot iron into his cock. Sweat rose on his palms and he had seen, when he looked more closely – and come on, he’d not got his DCI badge because he’d collected the tops of cereal packets – that there were tiny lines of tension in Sam’s thighs.

 

Gene had had enough women this way to know what to do, but this time it had been…this time it had really fucking mattered and when he had got his fingers greased up and drawn the first line across the crinkled circle of skin, he gave a sympathetic gasp when Sam twitched. As Gene had smoothed and circled, Sam started grabbing the pillow he leant on, making a sound deep in his throat, and the moment Sam had spread his own legs wider and said “Please”, intense as all fuck, and tried to shoved back onto Gene’s fingers, Gene wanted to flip him over and kiss him more than he even wanted to continue.

 

It was bloody queer. He was being a bloody queer, a bloody, flipping…

 

“Queer” Gene had whispered, as he sank in, feeling a fizzling pleasure right to the soles of his feet. A panic in his brain with every thrust: Sam. Sam. Sam.

 

“Bent, fudge-packer, arse-bandit, Nancy-boy, Dorothy, faggot.” He’d caught both Sam’s hands in his own and the pain as they clenched tighter together, fingers interlaced, had triangulated with the intense, dirty heat around Gene’s cock. Sam’s arse, Sam’s fucking _arse._ “Back-door boy, chocolate miner, limp-wrist, gay-boy” Gene had been saying, getting louder, breathing harder, seeing spots in the corners of his eyes and letting it all come out of his mouth like lancing a boil.

 

Sam had become incoherent, moaning on every stroke, “Gee, Geee…” He’d been calmer before Gene had pulled him up on his knees to the get the reach around, but then the angle had changed and Sam had gone mad, reaching back to try and caress Gene or push him in further – Gene couldn’t tell. Finally, as Sam had come, as the whole world shifted, Gene had just fallen forward, calling out “Sam!” like one of them was lost, coming into the tightness and letting himself fall into Sam.

 

It had been ten minutes later that the neighbours had come round with nervous expressions, thinking that they’d been hearing them kill each other.

 

And that was the last time they’d ever used Gene’s house, besides being the last time they relied on their own ability to keep the sex quiet.

 

\- - -

 

So, though music had never before played a role in Gene Hunt’s sex life, now Beethoven’s fifth got him fucking hard.

 

They had a record player and a stack of 78’s, the player a shabby thing Sam had bought in a junk shop in the outskirts of town and the records simply the longest, cheapest, loudest things they could lay hands on.

 

No conversation had passed about it. There was no discussion, no reference, no innuendo at work or double-edged terms of endearment.

 

It had to sound safe.

 

Sam’s flat was cramped, damp and visually offensive and his bed might as well not have existed for the uses they could put it to. But his neighbours were party-prone students and young couples with babies and a mutual allowance of noise – providing it was for a reasonable time, at a reasonable time – meant Gene could come over and indulge his new-found love of German composers once a week without much comment. He would tend to carry in a bulging fawn file to help develop the impression that they were solving cases out of hours.

 

He couldn’t hear what Sam said now, if he said anything, not over the trumpets and cymbals, only see the perfect red, wet ‘O’ of his mouth as he threw his head back, letting Gene into his arse again and again.

 

There was a condition to it – Gene had realised early on. Sam made it clear without actually saying anything that fucking was only on offer if they hadn’t argued that day, if Gene had not at any point manhandled or attempted to dominate him.

 

It took a little while for Gene to see that pattern, but when he had, when he’d translated that in his head, it had scared him away from shoving Sam around, even if it hadn’t already been in his best interests not to. That unspoken rule was, however, apparently Sam’s only concession to anxiety about that type of sex.

 

Come to that, it didn’t even worry Gene any more. Well, not relatively speaking anyway. After all, fucking was fucking. Men fuck, therefore they are. Therefore they are men.

 

The thing that really troubled Gene was an unsought fantasy, a recurring vision, one that came to him at inopportune times of day and made his hands slip on the rests of his office chair.

 

In his mind’s eye he saw Sam stretched out, laid – oh yes, laid, that was a good one – laid out across something, naked all over and just…waiting. Waiting on his back, cock rising into the air, red and dripping, just dripping at that very moment for Gene, because of Gene. Sam clenching the bed sheets and trying not to arch up, trying to stop himself begging for the return of the sweet heat of Gene’s mouth…

 

And there, in Gene’s mind, he knelt between Sam’s legs and returned to sucking his cock, owning him more fully, somehow, from that than from all the rogering in the world. And Gene was so blindingly hard from just that – fuck, from just imagining that – that he was afraid he was going to come in his trousers.

 

Thus to the triumphal strains of the greatest deaf composer, Gene would now find himself thrusting into Sam with pleasure but reaching around for his cock almost fearfully, feeling its weight and girth and trying not to imagine it resting on his tongue, thick and male and wrong in his mouth. He would lean forward, having to worry at mouthfuls of Sam’s neck until dangerously visible love-bites came up, because when the music started he now salivated with hunger like a fucking Pavlov’s dog to its fucking bell.

 

\- - -

 

Sometimes, Gene missed being able to talk to Sam. But he wasn’t a complete and utter idiot – he knew that was never coming back. He knew that men might be able to have sex together, quite fantastically in fact, but who the fuck ever heard of a gay couple?

 

\- - -

 

“Bloody hell,” Sam was murmuring, almost to himself, one day about a month later. “More love-bites.” He angled his neck again, examining it critically in a mirror in the furniture section of the department store they’d cleared out, its floor detective having been found liberally spread across his namesake.

 

There was no one around besides the two of them, and standing as they were in a room mock-up for the latest in modern lounges it felt oddly safe.

 

“Seriously” Sam continued with a voice only half-mocking, still not really talking to Gene, “with you it’s all bite innit?”

 

“ _Love_ -bites” Gene replied, defensively, mind on the murder scene and not really thinking, dropping a swift peck to the bruise because he wanted to, because he could.

 

It was only seeing Sam looking at him with wider and wider eyes, with a mouth fighting between surprise and a smile that made him think over it, and as Gene looked back, mouth suddenly dry, he realised he’d hadn’t been lying, hadn’t even been joking, it wasn’t funny, it was…fuck.

 

Oh fuck.

 

\- - -

 

With something like that hanging over you, what the fuck difference did it make if you admitted you could fancy a cock of an evening? Keeping something silent might make it secret but it didn’t make it safe, didn’t change what it was.

 

And, damn him if it did, he didn’t _want_ it to change.

 

Gene had let Sam drive him to the flat, talking about banalities. He’d been increasingly, painfully aware of the rising tent of Sam’s trousers, of Sam moistening his lips, losing the thread of what he was saying. He felt a roasting heat in his own face every time he looked at Sam’s bulge, because he wanted…oh how Gene wanted – had dreamt of it, all these nights, like a teenage boy who’d just discovered tits or something. It felt so fucking _natural_ , so easy to feel like that, and Gene wasn’t sure his fears were going to be enough to stop him any more.

 

His Dad had told him that real men did certain things and not others, had implied that if he didn’t work hard enough at being a real man, he’d become something else, something queer.

 

But what the fuck had Dad been? Fifty years of screwing and drinking and never lifting a dish towel and what had that made him? Yeah, right, probably a ‘real’ man but what was real about it?

 

He was Gene Hunt. He was the Guv. He was not scared of anything; he would not be made scared of anything and he was determined that that was not ever going to change, regardless of who he fancied.

 

“I want to suck your cock” Gene said, suddenly, looking straight forwards.

 

The car gave a lurch to the right: “Bloody hell, Gene!” Sam cried out, “Fuck, warn me, will you? Oh shit…I’ve…it’s going to get on the seat and stain the leather, you pillock.”

 

“I’ll take that as yes, shall I?”

Sam was flushed and panting, the dark stain at his crotch spreading whilst his hands drummed on the wheel. He looked quickly at Gene, and his eyes sparkled:

 

“You take anything you want, mate.”

 

Then he had to swerve again – he’d missed a red light.

 

In the flat, they’d barely got the door closed behind them before they started stripping each other, jackets flying away, shoes kicked to the corners. Sam ducked away to start up “Big Band Hits of the 50s!” and soon the strains of Glen Miller and his Pennsylvania 6-5000 were forming an oddly sweet background to their explorations.

 

When Sam was down to his pants, Gene guided him towards the wall, and Sam smiled in agreement and let himself be pressed back and kissed. And when he drew back for air, Gene made his way to Sam’s neck, to his ear, to sucking and nibbling and feasting, giving little groans of his own whenever Sam’s breath caught. He licked a stripe down Sam’s middle, stopping just under his belly button, near where the ache always sat for him, whenever Sam was around.

 

“Gene, oh god, Gene” Sam was murmuring, “Gene bloody Hunt, you’ve been holding out on me.”

 

Gene still couldn’t speak, and he moved up, found the left nipple and laved carefully around then over it, rubbing his tongue across it roughly like he had once done when pleasuring birds, and from Sam’s sounds that worked for him too. Gene felt the press of Sam’s erection through his boxers as he tried to hump at his hip and had to chuckle, feeling a great well of affection rising up, relaxing him – he could take all the time in the world. Holding Sam’s hips still, he let his teeth graze the nipple and Sam gave a kind of keening yelp and said “Again!” so definitely that Gene risked a little bite and felt a shudder pass right through the other man’s body.

 

Sam drew a deep, shaky breath: “Ge…Gene. Fuck, get down there or it’ll be too late.” 

“But you already came” Gene replied, a little petulantly – he’d been hoping to drag this out, right out…

 

“But you’re really, really good at this” Sam retorted, and Gene kissed him again for that, feeling a sense of wonder.

 

And then, at long last, he dropped to his knees and pulled down Sam’s underwear. There was Sam’s cock, slick and messy with the orgasm in the car and the precome leaking out now. As Gene pondered it, a tiny bead of fluid oozed from the head and he watched it in fascination. It was beautiful.

 

Which was way more fucking feminine than he was ever going to be, queer or not, thank-you very much, and so Gene got smartly down to business, put his hand out to hold it still and licked over the head.

 

Sam’s approval could be pretty much taken as read at this point, but it was still gratifying to hear the faint swearing from above, creeping in under the strains of Chattanooga Choo-choo.

 

It was better than any of his fantasies, Gene decided, the weight of it in his mouth, the heat and the salty musk. He couldn’t get it down far but that was what hands were for, and he licked round and round the top with quiet satisfaction, feeling Sam’s thighs tremble to either side of him. Gene rubbed the point of his tongue under the head, fast and hard and that was when Sam clasped his hands into Gene’s hair, hurting as he tugged, tried to cry out a warning and came.

 

Gene wasn’t listening anyway, he was too busy swallowing, and coming in his pants, and letting the shattered pieces of all his assumptions fall into dust around him.

 

He sat back on the floor, lay back, looked at the grimy ceiling and waited for the world to right itself. Then there was a weight and Sam was lying beside him, arm across his chest and Gene hugged him close automatically, easily. Breathing deeply, they gazed at each other, and Gene only gradually realised that the music had stopped.

 

Sam was playing with a lock of his hair, which Gene hadn’t noticed starting but felt…pretty good.

 

“I find it hard to communicate in relationships, um, to, you know, say things?” Sam was saying, looking intently at him. “But I do want to talk. I want to…I want more of you than…this” and he ran a hand over Gene’s side. “Which is bloody great, don’t get me wrong, but I want…I’ve been afraid of ruining it so I haven’t said this before, but please, Gene, talk to me.”

 

Gene snorted: “And say what? Case stuff? The Footie? How your eyes remind me of limpid pools?”

 

Sam didn’t chuckle. “Tell me about why it’s taken three months of shagging for you to be able to say out loud you were interested in my body.” He moved his hand to stroke Gene’s chest, but kept his gaze fixed onto his face: “Tell me why you swear at yourself when you fuck me. Tell me why you kissed me in the store today.” He looked away then, for a second, and did his old dry-click-swallow: “Tell me if you want…more of me than my body.”

 

Gene froze, for a moment. And then, slowly, into the silence, he let the truths start to slip out. Dangerous words, hanging in the air like smoke.

 

And Sam nodded and sometimes wept for him, and dropped kisses to his shoulder, absorbing it all and saying softly, every now and again: “I hear you.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Posted in original 2007 form and therefore unbeta'd


End file.
